Page 22 of Little Pieces of Light

Xander

I shuffled downstairs in my sweats and T-shirt. Dad was at the piano in his pajamas, hair askew.

“Xander!” he cried, still playing. “Not bad, eh? Your old man still has it. Come play with me. Let’s duet like we used to.”

“Dad, it’s four in the morning.”

“Come. Sit.” He stopped playing to pat the bench beside him. “What shall it be? A little Mozart? Perhaps some Schubert?”

I rubbed my eyes and glanced over at his desk, strewn with papers, each covered with equations. I bent to get a closer look.

“ No! ” Dad tore from the piano, grabbed his papers, and bunched them protectively to his chest. “Not yet. I can’t share this with anyone. Not even my own precious son. If the information got into the wrong hands, God knows what untold horrors might be unleashed upon the planet.”

Paranoia. This is new .

My stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Xander, that I’m close. So close.”

“To a unified theory?”

“Indeed, my boy. Complete and utter comprehension of the world.” Dad’s eyes were wide and alight from within.

“Newton thought he had it. Einstein too, then he lost it. Then came Heisenberg with his uncertainties, who said it must remain unknowable, and then Schrodinger with his wave functions, who said it was not. But they were all missing one piece of the puzzle. Like the very paradoxical nature of particle-wave duality itself, they were all correct and yet all wrong at the same time!”

“And you think you’ve found the last piece?” I asked dubiously, yet my pulse quickened just the same. My dad was a genius, very nearly on par with the greats he just named. Was it possible…?

“It’s there, Xander,” Dad said, taking a seat at his desk and rifling through his papers. “Just outside of my reach but right there. I can feel it.”

I stepped back, uncertainty swirling in my gut that perhaps my dad was afflicted with his own kind of duality—that he was telling the truth but that unlocking such a discovery might come at the cost of his own mind.

“Okay, Dad, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you, my boy. Thank you…”

In our little kitchen, I made coffee and set one mug down beside my father—already back at work, scribbling away—and took another upstairs.

I still had hours to go before school. I sat at my own desk, spartan and clean, and watched the morning light creep over the surrounding greenery from my window.

The queasiness in my stomach didn’t abate, and the black coffee wasn’t helping.

With trepidation, I let my fingers hover over the keys of my laptop.

Finally, I opened the search engine and started typing.

Warning signs of dementia

A list populated, and I scanned it quickly.

Bouts of forgetfulness, blankness, mood changes, withdrawal…

My stomach clenched harder. He’d exhibited mild signs of all those symptoms and hadn’t stepped foot outside the house in a week. It was merely Dad’s zeal for the science, I reasoned. He wasn’t forgetful, he was preoccupied with the work and obsessed with finishing.

Every great physicist has a little bit of madness in him, he’d once told me.

“Not yet,” I murmured. “Please, just not yet.”

I turned my concentration to today’s tutoring session with Emery.

Helping her pass calculus was a worthy challenge, at least, to keep her tyrannical father off her back.

I concocted a dozen practice equations—more than she could do in an hour—and then grabbed my phone for the hundredth time since Saturday night.

I reread our text exchange over and over.

I wish I’d been there for you tonight.

I’d failed Emery, arriving at the bonfire in time to see Dean and Harper help her and her brother to Dean’s car.

And I’d failed her over the past seven years.

It wasn’t my fault that my letters had gone missing, but I could have tried harder to connect.

Instead, my wounded pride and more wounded heart kept me from trying again.

Who knows what might have happened for Emery had I just made the effort to find her? To tell her…

“There’s nothing more to say,” I declared to no one.

Feelings my ten-year-old self had nurtured were trying to grow back after I’d mercilessly yanked them out.

If I let them take root in the empty places where my mother had been, I’d suffer a different version of the same colossal hurt all over again.

Abandonment. Rejection. And even if I threw caution to the wind, the odds of something happening between a girl like Emery and a guy like me were statistically negligible.

I had nothing to offer her but math equations and quantum theory.

My father had taken that route, and where did it get him? He’d offered his heart to my mother with both hands, and she’d left him with nothing.

Because loving someone wasn’t enough to make them stay.

***

At the Academy, I headed straight to the gym.

A group of guys who’d tried out for row crew surrounded a bulletin in the glass case outside.

Some were fist-bumping, but most muttered dejectedly.

I hung back, watching, as Brent let out a curse and punched the wall.

A few of his buddies led him away, patting him on the back.

“My father’s going to kill me,” he said, and suddenly my shit-talking felt petty and small.

When the group had moved on, I stepped up to read the roster, scrolling past the single, pairs, and fours, straight to the eight-man sweep.

Eights:

Coxswain: Dean Yearwood

Stroke Seat: Rhett Calloway

Seven Seat: Henry Moore

Six and Five Seats: Knox Whitman and Tucker Hill (captain)

Four and Three Seats: Justin Wu and Kai Thornton

Two Seat: Orion Mercer

Bow Seat: Xander Ford

I let out a breath. For all my braggadocio, I hadn’t been entirely certain Coach Daniels would take me on. My small smile vanished when a voice came from behind.

“Congrats, Ford.”

I turned. Tucker loomed behind me with Rhett Calloway beside him. Just like seven years ago, though I wasn’t the scrawny kid they’d pelted with water balloons anymore.

“I guess we’ll see what you got,” Tucker said. “But Coach doesn’t fuck around and neither do I. We want to win. End of.”

“I can imagine,” I said before I could stop myself. “Considering how you blew it last season.”

Apparently, one aspect of my little Experiment was the development of a death wish.

Tucker’s eyes flared. “What the fuck do you know about it?”

“New Haven Prep beat you in the five thousand and the two thousand meters in two separate regattas.” I shrugged. “Given the glaring weaknesses in their crew, both should’ve been easy wins.”

Rhett chuckled darkly. “I’m starting to like this guy.”

“Whatever.” Tucker puffed his chest. “Pull your weight, Ford, and we won’t have any problems. But if I see you looking at my girlfriend the way you looked at her on Saturday night, I’m going to take an oar and smash every bone in your face.”

“Informing me is premeditation. A bold choice.”

Tucker smirked. “My father is a senator. I can do whatever the fuck I want. You on the other hand…your mom bolted, and your father is a washed-up loser whose brains are turning to oatmeal as we speak.”

A jolt of white-hot rage flooded me, and my hands balled into fists.

Tucker’s smirk became a satisfied smile. “Enjoy your smart mouth while you can, Ford,” he said, walking away with Rhett. “Everyone knows that batshit crazy runs in the family.”

***

“You okay?” Dean asked as we walked through the halls after midmorning break. “You made the crew! That’s huge! So why do you look like someone pissed in your Cheerios?”

“Part of Tucker’s little welcome-to-the-crew speech included a few comments about my dad.” I gave him a hard look. “I thought you said he’s a good captain.”

“He is so long as he doesn’t have a personal beef with you.” Dean’s eyebrows rose meaningfully. “Does he have a personal beef with you?”

“No. He has no reason to worry, believe me.”

Emery and I are just friends. I’d been repeating that over and over in my mind like a yogi’s mantra, but it wasn’t bringing me any peace.

“Mmkay,” Dean said. “Just keep it that way. For your sake.”

“Hey, Dean,” I asked after a moment. “How does everyone know my father had some…health issues in Maryland?”

And that my mom walked out. Don’t forget that little tidbit.

“My money is on Delilah Winslow,” he said. “Her mom works for the Pembroke Science Institute at Brown. Delilah must’ve heard it from her.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Sorry, man. They smell weakness like a shark in the water. But don’t let it get you down. Russell Ford is a legend.” He chucked my shoulder and grinned. “See you at practice tomorrow, my friend.”

I nodded absently. Tucker’s threats of physical violence aside, I was looking forward to getting into a shell and rowing out some of my stagnant energy. Nothing was better than being in the fresh air, out on the water.

Well, almost nothing…

Emery Wallace walked down the hall a dozen yards ahead of me.

Her long blond hair hung in thick ribbons down the back of a dress that showed the luscious curves and valleys of her hourglass figure.

She was Marilyn Monroe remade in a modern era—with the same kind of intangible charisma that made people gravitate to her.

And like Marilyn, Emery’s beauty was as far as most people got.

Not me. I knew the heart that beat in her chest and her warmth and her light. I’d told Emery that love was finite, and of course, she disagreed. Her capacity to love and trust and hope seemed bottomless.

But I knew the jagged rocks were down there; I’d been smashed on them before. To ignore the risk was stupid, something I strove to never be.

I continued to my speech and debate class, which was as simple to me as finger painting and served to remind me that the Experiment meant nothing. It was just a time-out before going to MIT, to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he didn’t solve for a unified theory, I’d finish what he started.

Everything—and everyone—else was just a distraction.